Hello faithful readers!
Just another friendly update coming straight from the heart of Turkmenistan. Last week I visited my permanent site in Mashpaya village (formerly Stalin) in the Halach etrap, Lebap welayat. It's a very lovely area. The Amu Darya River is close by and so there's a lot of vegetation. They've diverted the river into several canals which help with growing. Lebap is supposed to be one of the few areas of T-stan where there are fresh veggies year round (or at least for most of the year). Arriving in Halach, I almost felt that I was at home; there were actually trees with fall colors and plenty of farm land. Very green. Also, extremely muddy. Stalin/Mashpaya is part of a daihan birleshigi – collective farm. This is a remnant of the Soviet days. It means that people own land to farm on but they must give a certain percentage of their harvest to the government.
The new host family is nice enough although I can't foresee really bonding with the host parents. They're not mean or anything, just not my type. I'll start shopping for a new family once I get back. Sounds kind of awful, huh? But most volunteers do not live with their originally assigned HF for the whole two years. And besides, I figure I'd rather be with a really great family since it is two years, than be with a mediocre family just because I'll feel guilty moving out. Both the host parents work at the school doing janitorial work. There are two host sisters. One is a student and the other works at home doing embroidery. She spent two years in an institute studying accounting but there's no work for her. There are two sons as well. One works in Ashgabat, the other in Turkey.
I visited my school – it's bigger than our school in Magtymguly. There are two floors, no heat. A few "real" black boards but the majority are just painted blocks of wood. The floors used to be tiled but now the tiles are broken and/or missing and much of the cement base layer is showing through. No computers. No phone. Nice courtyard though, and they actually have gym and drawing classes which is new for me. Magtymguly does not offer these courses.
I took a train to and from Halach. From Ashgabat, it's 800 kilometers but the trip took 18 hours. (I'm not sure if it's 800 km as the crow flies or from A-bat to T-bat and then down to Halach, which is the route the train went.) That's right; you could fly from JFK to Istanbul faster than that. But, I guess it was a fun experience. Sleeping on the train, bonding with the other Lebap trainees, chatting with the random old Russian men who shared our compartment. We can't figure out why PC didn't fly us – other trainees who will be closer to Ashgabat than we flew. Maybe there weren't enough tickets – who knows? There is an airport in Turkmenabat so it's possible to fly there and then take a taxi to Halach. Halach is 180 km from T-bat. Our train tickets cost 73,000 manat. About 5 dollars. A plane ticket is 250,000 manat, or a little less than $20.
Peace Corps does not have an office in Turkmenabat, but we do have a P.O. Box. My address will be changing once I move and I'll give you an update ASAP. I want to verify that what I have written is correct before I give it out.
The current PCVs in my area gave me a site description that I'll attach – the girl who wrote it is just about to complete her two year service so she should know more than I do J I am concerned about what she wrote concerning the T-bat post office, so again, I'll ask PC staff and keep you posted.
My mom sent an email asking several questions which I'll answer now…
1. Will I live in my own apartment?
Like I said, I have a HF. It is possible for some volunteers to live alone in apartments, but it's more frequent in the city. In the village, it's cheaper and safer to live with a HF. Volunteers, unless they are married, are not allowed to live together because PC thinks it will prevent them from fully integrating into their communities.
2. Besides camel head, grease soup, fake cake, gristle and fat what do I eat?
Breakfast is most often bread with butter and/or homemade jelly. Sometimes milk. Always tea. Lunch we eat at Collin's. His host mom usually serves: tea, bread, carrot salad, sliced tomatoes served (sometimes) with onions, apples, bananas and mandarins if we're lucky along with any of the following common Turkmen meals:
Gutap – "pie," dough filled with spinach, mushrooms, or meat, shaped like a half moon and fried
Chorba – soup. Anything goes really, usually with carrots, potatoes, and meat
Un ash – one of our favorites. Basically like homemade chicken noodle soup
Today at lunch we had soup with cabbage dumplings. Another popular dish is quite similar to ravioli: small dough hexagons filled with spinach and boiled. Served with yogurt. Collin's host mom also makes a "turkmen pizza:" like a pizza only there is dough on top and bottom and it's filled with meat, pumpkin, and onions.
Dinner is bread, tea, and a Turkmen dish or two. We've been eating a lot of watermelon recently. There's also a lot of dill, parsley and basil here, which they consider vegetables and eat straight up.
Familiar veggies: tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin, onion, eggplant, carrots. They do a lot of canning and pickling for the winter.
Fruits: watermelon, a melon similar to honeydew, grapes, bananas (imported), pomegranate, mandarin oranges (also imported), apricots, apples, peaches, persimmons (I think)
3. Common "farm" animals?
These live in our back yards: camels, cows, chickens, sheep, goats, ducks. Because many families have cows, there's often fresh dairy of varying degrees of tastiness.
4. Gardens?
Yes, nearly every family has veggies and some fruit trees/bushes. In Halach, it's safe to say that EVERYONE has a garden.
5. Common means of transportation?
Bus (near Ashgabat or other cities) or marshurtka (public mini-van), train (not local), taxi. In T-stan, any car is a taxi. You flag someone down and ask if they'll take you where you need to go, negotiating the price before getting in the car. And women do not sit in the front seat unless they're offering a little somethin' somethin'. One of the Turkmen PC staff visited the US and tried to ask random people to take her places. Didn't work quite the way it does here and she was most offended.
6. What do people wear?
Depends. Ethnic Russians and other Third Country Nationals tend to be more modern in their dress. In cities you'll see jeans and miniskirts. Traditional Turkmen women wear dresses to their ankles with embroidery around the neckline and usually going down the middle of their chests and ending near the belly button, kind of horseshoe shaped. Modern Turkmen women will dress as the Russians do. I don't know if Russian women wear shorts in the summer. There's a lot of Russian TV here and therefore heavy cultural influence. In more liberal places, the dresses don't have to be ankle length.
7. What's your HF like?
Funny you should ask. Upon arriving back in Ashgabat, I was informed that I would immediately be moving out of my HF. There is a 2 year placement in Magtymguly and my family was chosen to host the volunteer for her time of service. Apparently during her visit, my host father kissed her hand, told her she was very beautiful, and tried to kiss her face. PC decided I had to move ASAP. FYI, he never did any of that to me.
This was rather disappointing, because I really liked them. My mother was warm and open, the sisters all friendly. We got along swimmingly. They gave me space but we still spent a lot of time together. My former host father is a lab assistant at the water treatment plant in A-bat. My host mom stayed at home to cook and watch after the animals. The 4 sisters and 1 brother were all students. We lived in a compound so I had my own door to the outside which was awesome. Alas…
My new HF (for the next 2 weeks): The house is nicer. My room is large and I have a sofa to sleep on. There's also heat, which is nice (last house = no heat in room). It's a lot brighter, too. Nicer kitchen, bathroom, toilet. But…the host mom is tough to deal with. She's pretty rude, in fact. I showed them photos on my laptop today and she said, "oh you must be rich. Buy us a computer. Tell your mom to buy us a computer as a present" I flat out told her "no"…not sure if that was appropriate or not, but whatever. She talks about me to her children right in front of me, too. And it's not all glowing either. But they can get away with it because I don't understand a lot. My other family had a lot more respect for me and never would have done that.
So now, it's awkward because I have to start all over acclimating this family to what it's like to live with an American – for instance, my independence is strange to them. I want to go to a friend's house or to the city rather than spend time getting to know them. Not that I don't want to know them, but having been here a month, I've earned certain freedoms that it doesn't seem fair to have to give up because a new family might not understand. Oh well. It's only two weeks.
This family has 5 children: 3 older sons and 2 daughters. 2 sons are married. The unmarried son was pushed on to me the first night I was here (I got winked at by the host mom). The daughters are nice, one is my age. The dad's an engineer, the mom stays home. One of the married sons lives here with his wife. Every room in the house is a bedroom, including the foyer. Two weeks. Two weeks.
A few brief tidbits:
There's a dearth of hugging here. Of course, it's culturally inappropriate to hug a man in public if you are an unmarried girl but I haven't even seen displays of affection between parents and their children. It makes me sad because I can't imagine my parents not hugging me and telling me they love me. And that's another one: I haven't heard parents tell their children that they love them, either.
There was no gas the other evening. We had to cook our dinner over a fire outside – no biggie but it did get pretty chilly in the house. This is only interesting because Turkmenistan exports something like 90,000,000 (there may be an extra zero needed there; I forget the exact figure) cubic meters of gas/year.
Well, that's it for now. We're going to Ashgabat today to drink beer and have bad (but good enough) pizza J Hope you're all doing well; I'll send my new address out ASAP but until then (and after, too) the Ashgabat address will always work.
Happy Sunday!
Jess
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